


With Honey

by Ryo Hoshi (Hoshi_Ryo)



Series: Catching Flies [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Homestuck
Genre: Alien Cultural Differences, Developing Relationship, Gen, Human/Troll Society, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Post-Sburb/Sgrub, Timeline Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-30
Updated: 2014-04-30
Packaged: 2018-01-21 08:09:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1543769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hoshi_Ryo/pseuds/Ryo%20Hoshi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hufflepuff Jane Crocker's got more concerns than the strange shadow memories that say she's older than 13 and her twin brother's not her twin, like making friends with one of the new non-human students.</p><p>Sure, he might be a Slyitherin (weirdly, given that even the most polite word in English for his kind is still a slur) and all, but that's no reason to not to be friendly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With Honey

**Author's Note:**

> This is not a happily-blended society--both Homestuck-type and HP-type trolls exist, and the Homestuck-type trolls got stuck into this shiny new reward universe as...the smartest and most common trolls. If you know how non-humans and specifically are viewed in HP canon, you should already have a good idea how well this has gone.

One month into her first year of Hogwarts, and Jane Crocker was not the most cheerful of Hufflepuffs.  Part of it was that her BFF had gone to Ravenclaw with her sister, while her twin John had went to Gryffindor.  It made hanging out with them awkward, if nothing else because some of the school was enough into the house rivalry thing to get on her if she spent too much time with people from another house.

At least it’d sunk in quickly that John was her twin and—in the set of memories that didn’t insist she was years older—they had almost always been together.  It kept down how many would get on her for it, but she could tell that it was still not approved of.

She didn’t have any particularly close friends within Hufflepuff, though.  She was the odd one out, magic having skipped two generations in the Crocker line _and_ her grandnanna having arranged for her to go to Hogwarts instead of one of the American schools…

She missed her other friends, too.  She _could_ send them owls in theory.  In practice, their schools were in ‘China maybe?’ and California, and the owl would be in for a very long flight.

(She envied Jake’s side of the family, too.  No squibs there, and his sister had her namesake’s talents in magic to boot.)

The only thing that really helped much was that there was a handful of troll students.  She’d caught that this was a very new thing, as normally trolls were considered creatures, not people, even within the wizarding world.

It looked like the most awkward of the handful was a seadweller—that was the _nicest_ term anybody used for them—who had somehow landed in Slytherin.

Jane had not realized just _how_ many disparaging terms there were for trolls before, and Ampora seemed rather determined to learn magic anyway.

It wasn’t helping that there were, it turned out, rumors of trolls who had learned enough magic to somehow pass themselves off as humans.  Jane was sure that this was merely rumor, though.  It wasn’t possible to be friends with Dirk—one of the rare _true_ cases of troll-raised humans, never mind all the tales of trolls stealing (and eating) babies—and not know how trolls were treated.  There were too many trolls to hide them from muggles, and everybody discriminated against them.

It wasn’t helping Ampora that the only other seadweller in the lot was a bit of an embarrassment even by Hufflepuff standards.  She meant well, but nobody should be that bubbly naturally.

Cronus Ampora was, when you got down to it, pitiful and Jane Crocker was determined to cheer him up.

 

Cronus was not sure what to make of the human who was paleflirtin’ with him.  He’d worked hard to get to be one of the first trolls accepted to a magic school, and he took some pride in that.  What little formal magic trolls knew had been passed from master to apprentice in secrecy, before.  Most of them just had to wing it.

And, alright, it _did_ mean a lot to him that he was a highblood.  It wasn't much, he was a guy and whatever the humans claimed about how it sucked to be a girl bein' universal, that just showed how much they didn't give a fuck 'bout those who weren't human.

'Course, they also didn't seem to notice that whenever they gave a nice job to a troll, it was almost always a troll that had rumble spheres, and when they did they made it loud and clear they'd never heard the old ladies what ran the troll enclaves complaining 'bout how uppity menfolk were getting.

He was pretty sure if he dared go back come the breaks, they'd be pointin' to him as a specific example of a dude who didn't know his place, what with goin' off to some fancy human school 'stead of being a good boy and learnin' better how to be pretty and shit for some nice highblood lady's pleasure.

Sure, he liked music and poetry, but he kinda wanted a bit more to life than just swimmin' around some highblood dame's hive and warmin’ her bench on demand.

None of this got him in too good with the other Slytherins, though.  None were that happy to see a troll in _their_ house, no matter how much he was of a good pedigree and hatchline and shit by troll standards.  What mattered to him was that he was a troll, and that was about the nicest word for him that they used, usually when there was a teacher watchin'.

He was pretty sure it was a bad sign when the head of the goddamn house felt the need to get on them for bein' a disgrace to the house what with how they were treatin' him for bein' a troll.

And now there was this Hufflepuff chick who was bringing him baked goods that didn't look like they were made by house elves.

It felt like she was pale for him, but he knew humans didn't do that quadrant shit, so he wasn't sure.

Still, it was nice to just talk 'bout shit with her and munch on the treats she brought, and even if she wasn't being pale for him it still was nice and calming to hang out with somebody who got that he wasn't human _and_ was fine with that.

So what if not everybody was okay with that, and they were getting dirty looks even from outside of their houses?

 

Jane was starting to notice that people were showing signs of minding that she was hanging out with a troll, and one from Slytherin too.  It was not too okay, really, and when her twin slipped over from the Gryffindor table to warn her about there even being some people _there_ who were getting huffy over it—apparently thinking she was some damsel in distress needing rescuing from (oh horrors) a troll _and_ a Slytherin…

She didn’t think too much of it, though.  Hufflepuffs made friends with _everybody_ , and why should it matter if their friends were human _or_ what house they were in?

She realized, later, that maybe she should have taken John’s warning a bit more seriously, when some older Gryffindors cornered her, wands out and insisting they just wanted to lift whatever spell her troll ‘boyfriend’ must have put on her.

Jane was confused by that part.  She wasn’t interested in Cronus _that_ way…and he was just _nice_ to her.  She was pretty sure he wasn’t into the Dark Arts, though some of his poetry might qualify as a weapon.

Still, the spells they were trying _hurt_ …

“Wvhat are you doin’ to Jane?!”

 

Later, John told her what had happened, poking a bit at the hat that was clearly a gift from Roxy.  Only one of the Lalondes would have given her a kitty hat, and the two hand-embroidered white spots above the eyes were not neat enough to be Rose’s handiwork.

He’d spotted the Gryffindors following her, and gone to tell Cronus—and a teacher, of course.

The fight which ensued, she was certain, was nothing like the one he told her about.

The older kids who’d cornered her were being punished, though.  They’d already gotten chewed out in front of everybody, and it got made clear that they were a shame to their house.

When she was allowed out of the infirmary, Jane made sure she made Cronus’s favorite muffins, and took him most of the batch.


End file.
